"There are all kinds of people. Nobody’s bad in general, but it’s just where your hearts meet."

DEPARTED FROMDelhi, India

ARRIVED INAustin, Texas

YEAR2006

AGE22

NOW LIVES INAustin, Texas

COLLECTED BY

LOVLEEN GILL'S FIRST DAY

TRANSCRIPT

I came to the US when I was 22. I had big dreams for myself. I did architecture, I had a job offer, but within one month I got married to this guy here and came here. I mean, no career goals in general, no experience, just trusted my faith blindly, trusted my parents and him. In the airplane my husband was tense that no one would come to pick us up. Instead of one friend, two friends showed up and we were confused on what to do, so I went in one friend’s car and he went in the other, so we were separated there. He chose the better friends, I believe, and he is still our friend. The other friend I drove with kept telling me gibberish on my husband, like crap I didn’t even want to listen to! When you come to US, you pick your own family, you have to get a support system for yourself and that’s how I figured that out for myself. When we got home, it was lunchtime and we had some great neighbors (whom we are still friends with) and they had made some special North Indian food for us, and lunch was awesome. I saw another version of lunch. For dinner we were scavenging again - I was so focused on studying that I had no idea how to cook. That was it. I was a big blogger when I came here, so I had a lot of other kinds of support. It’s been seven years now and I finally feel like I have a community around me. You have to pick the right people that you can connect with. There are all kinds of people. Nobody’s bad in general, but it’s just where your hearts meet. I’m lucky the first day that I got an experience like that.